Author
Topic: INDI and Raspberry Pi 3 (Read 2001 times)

Hi - while my main scope is at a remote observatory in Spain, I've missed the hands-on aspect of imaging and have been working on setting up a more mobile imaging system, which consists of an HEQ5, a William Optics Star 71 and a DSLR.

I had been hoping to use The SkyX now that it has been released for the Raspberry Pi, but sadly, it doesn't yet support my devices, so instead I used Kstars and INDI, which has a version of EQMOD, and supports DSLRs.

This left only the question of powering the Pi. I use a 4 way lighter socket to power my devices, so bought a 2.1 amp car USB charger that fits into a cigarette lighter.

Imaging

Kstars/EKOS is impressive - Kstars is a planetarium programme, while EKOS can be used to control the devices and for automatic scheduling. It also allows you to download astrometry.net for offline platesolving.

It took a little while to work out, but on the second night I managed to

1) Successfully move to an object and use the platesolver to get to within 30" of the desired location.2) Focus using a Bahtinov mask.3) Take 2 hours of data on M45.4) Capture flats.

It took about 10 minutes from polar aligning the scope to starting imaging.

I have to say that I found Kstars does crash occasionally, but its straightforward to restart and reconnect to the equipment.

So, while I'm looking forward to getting TSX running fully, this is a perfectly viable solution for imaging, either in your back garden or in the field.

You can also get time updates via GPS with a GPS dongle. You do have to do a bit of hacking with gpsd to get it working but it is another option.

I too have found Ekos a bit flakey on a Pi3 and have switched over to CCDCiel/PHD3, which runs very well. You do miss out on a planetarium but I didn't find Stars to run all that well on a Pi in any event.

I have been following your exploits on the INDI forum.... can be frustrating I know....

I have spent the last month or so writing a focuser driver for the Lakeside( C & C++ is still a challenge for me).... had a LOT of technical input from the designer, Peter Chance.... & we still are discussing how to release it when done...

I have found the Kstars prog on Windows to be very stable for me so far.... the transfer of the image back to the Obsy PC & control of the equipment from Windows Kstars via the PI3 to be excellent...

Now the focuser is in beta testing, I will attempt to run a full sessions.... the CEM60 has been tweaked via the guy who wrote that driver (The CEM manual has 2 inaccuracies) & someone has recently completed writing a good working version of the Quantum filter wheel, so I am in business!

I have CCDiel running with PHD2 (which works well once I worked out how to compile something from source!) along with Astronomy.net for plate solving and precision slews. Autonomy.net is a pic to compile so if you go that route let me know as there is a major gotcha with the current version of Jessie. Once I get my USBFocus controller back from the mender, I should have a fully self contained Indi setup ready for trying out...maybe at Kelling.

I have been following your exploits on the INDI forum.... can be frustrating I know....

I have spent the last month or so writing a focuser driver for the Lakeside( C & C++ is still a challenge for me).... had a LOT of technical input from the designer, Peter Chance.... & we still are discussing how to release it when done...

I have found the Kstars prog on Windows to be very stable for me so far.... the transfer of the image back to the Obsy PC & control of the equipment from Windows Kstars via the PI3 to be excellent...

Now the focuser is in beta testing, I will attempt to run a full sessions.... the CEM60 has been tweaked via the guy who wrote that driver (The CEM manual has 2 inaccuracies) & someone has recently completed writing a good working version of the Quantum filter wheel, so I am in business!

The project is getting more & more solid every time...

Phil

Dear Phil,

Hi - great to hear you are making progress, on both the driver and in using the Pi - I talked with Peter on Friday and he mentioned that someone was developing an Indi driver (I was talking to him about possibly writing an X2 driver...). I am looking to get something mobile, so needs to run just on the Pi - though interesting to hear that Kstars works better on Windows.

Will look forward to hearing how you get on, and I if I ever crack how to compile an X2 driver (trying to write one for an HEQ5 to avoid the need for lots of extra cables), I'll pick your brains about the Lakeside Indi driver.

Colin

P.S. I think I have your old WO Star 71 - I bought it from Jim just before Christmas, he told me he'd bought it from you!

You can also get time updates via GPS with a GPS dongle. You do have to do a bit of hacking with gpsd to get it working but it is another option.

I too have found Ekos a bit flakey on a Pi3 and have switched over to CCDCiel/PHD3, which runs very well. You do miss out on a planetarium but I didn't find Stars to run all that well on a Pi in any event.

Chris

Dear Chris,

Hi - I was thinking about trying CCDCiel. I don't really use the planeterium - all Kstars really does for me is act as a way of running EKOS and as a source for RA and DEC. Thanks for the advice - I'll give it a try.

I did think about a GPS dongle, but at the moment have no way to use the location information (KStars limits you to cities it already knows about - at least I couldn't find a way to input my true location..) and didn't think the extra time accuracy would help given that the location is set to Greenwhich! Did you find a way to get the location info from the GPS into CCDCiel?

Thanks for moving this - I can now see all your write ups on CCDciel etc!

One question - are you running Raspbian? I found that I had to install Ubuntu Mate to get Kstars to install, and but the upside was that were packages available for astrometry.net and PHD2 so no compilation was necessary. The downside was having to do more on configuring the i2c and getting VNC to run which cannot now be done through the interface.

Under Indi there is an Auxiliary Device called gpsd which not surprisingly links in with gpsd running on the Pi and gets the NMEA data from GPS. So positional data is available in Indi but I have not got as far yet as seeing how to access this under any of the Indi Mount setups.

I have to admit to quite liking CCDCiel and how it links up with PHD2 much like SGPro does. You can setup sequences using RA and Dec quite happily and will slew, plate solve and re-slew for positional accuracy and then fire up PHD2 to guide with, handle dithering etc etc. Sequences can be saved out so could easily be setup in advance. Its got a nice small footprint and seems very solid.

Yes I am running Raspian on the Pi. I found Ubuntu Mate quite a chore and KStars very slow and unstable. PHD2 compiles very easily, Astrometry.net was a bit of a chore as you need to install and compile it with an older version of the C compiler than currently distributed. Once I had found that gotcha, everything compiled pretty happily, though it did take a few hours!

I have to admit to quite liking CCDCiel and how it links up with PHD2 much like SGPro does. You can setup sequences using RA and Dec quite happily and will slew, plate solve and re-slew for positional accuracy and then fire up PHD2 to guide with, handle dithering etc etc. Sequences can be saved out so could easily be setup in advance. Its got a nice small footprint and seems very solid.

Chris

I'll definitely give this a go - I tried to demonstrate imaging to the next door neighbour's kids on Sunday, only to spend most of my time rebooting Kstars!

gpsd is a little tricky to get going as the main stumbling block actually seems to be that gpsd doesn't always get the baud rate correct for the USB port! (I have to use "stty speed 38400 </dev/ttyUSB0" to kick it)

At this moment in time, kstars cannot access GPSD - there was an enhancement request in to do so, but they are looking at the possibilities...

As for entering location in kstars, use this :

Settings -> Geographic

Fill in the "View/Edit location data", using Long/Lat in the form 52 40 31.00 0 -18 12.0 (minus for west, plus for east) & fill in ALL the fields incl. DST rule